


"^^^ '■^' 














v. c - 



•.^ ^r35!ntJt((5^ 






-^^ 






%.^'^i^^ 













%^^ 






( 1 • aV 



Ay -^ * e H o 

r „ 1 • " .' „ V 






,^" 



■^ o""- 



^ 1 y^^ • 



'^>, **, ,/ 



• ;.*' 



••• ^\- ... <i. ""•' .4^ 







r> 











.0 ^~ 









k 



..* A 



'■>■ 



<. 



V . . ' - ^ 



v^ 



^■^ / 







.4 o. 



h^ 






^ 













la: '^^\ -^.^^ -if^-' 



EULOGY 



ON 



DANIEL WEBSTER, 



DELIVERED 



BEFORE THE STUDENTS OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE, 



(Dtt MM, Mn, 1% 1852. 



1^ 

BY ROSWELL D. HITCHCOCK, 

COLLINS PROFESSOR OF NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 



BRUNSWICK: 
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. GRIFFIN. 

1852. 



E340 



25778 




rsf 



n 

I 



•\> 



BOWDOIN COLLEGE, NOV. 13th, 1S52. 

Dear Sir, — 

Agreeably to a vote of the Students we have the pleasure of 
thanking you on their behalf for your impressive discourse of yester- 
day, and requesting a copy for publication. 
Very truly yours, 



MELVILLE W. FyLLER, 
EPH. C. CUMMINGS, 
GEO. W. BARTLETT, 
S. M. EATON, 
GEO. R, WILLIAMSON, 



y. COMMITTEE. 



REV. PROF. R. D. niTCHCOCK. 



BOWDOIN COLLEGE, NOV. 15th, 1852. 

Gentlemen, — 

The Discourse, such as it is, is at your service. Would it were 

worthier. But I have done what I could within the limits prescribed, 

and with the time allowed me for preparation. If now, in a printed 

form, it may serve as a memento, both of my lively interest in the 

young men of the College, and our united interest in the great names 

and the great memories of our Common Country, my desires will all 

be met. 

Yours very truly, 

R. D. Hitchcock. 

To Messrs, Melville W. Fuller, 
and others. 



Young Gentleivien of Bowdoin College : 

It seems to be a law of history, seldom set 
aside, that great men shall come and go, not singly, 
but in companies. Just as great mountains com- 
monly stand in groups, or stretch in ranges. Just 
as the stars at night march over us in constellations. 
Sometimes it so happens, that this occasional 
advent of new greatness into the world is to sev- 
eral nations at once. Solomon, for example, 
moimted his father's throne in Jerusalem while 
Minos was giving laws to Crete, while the Ionian 
settlements were planting themselves in Asia Mi- 
nor, and Codrus had but recently inaugurated, by 
the baptism of his own blood, the independent and 
matchless career of Athens. In our modern his- 
tory, Mohammed Ali, Napoleon Bonaparte and the 



6 

Duke of Wellington were all born in the same 
year; Egypt, France and England thus cradhng 
their great captains in company. 

With individual nations the law referred to is 
more signal still. Exceptions to it are extremely 
rare. Great men, it is obvious, are nowhere a 
very frequent product of nature. They come at 
intervals, longer or shorter, as it best pleases the 
Divine munificence. But when to any nation they 
do come, they come in groups, each illustrating, 
and each enhancing the greatness of all the rest. 

Such certainly has been our own national ex- 
perience. When British authority first began to 
totter on our soil, there had sprung up among the 
colonies a goodly fellowship of Statesmen and Sol- 
diers, such as no youthful nation had ever produced 
before. Over the battle-fields of the Revolution, 
and over the Council Chambers of the Confeder- 
acy and the Constitution, there stood a regnant 
constellation, which bye and bye faded entirely 
from the heavens. Franklin, Henry and Otis; 
Washington, Adams and Jefferson; Hamilton, Jay 
and Madison, were the master lights of that blazing 
company. 

But while these were yet moving down our 
western sky, and sinking one by one beneath the 



horizon, other stars were already seen kindhng m 
the Orient. We need not enumerate them all. 
Four at least claun a special commemoration, since 
they outshme all others : — Marshall, Clay, Calliomi, 
Webster. Marshall, it is true, took part in some of 
the battles of the Revolution ; but the more liis- 
toric portion of his life belongs rather to the gene- 
ration which inherited the Constitution, and became 
res^Donsible, before God and man, for the mtegrity 
and the continuance of it. He died only seventeen 
years ago, leaving on the heart of this nation a debt 
of gratitude increasmg now every day with our 
rapidly increasing greatness. The other three 
came a little behind him ; and have but just van- 
ished from our sight. Two years ago, Calhoun 
sank ahnost on the very floor of the Senate Cham- 
ber. Last summer, bending his lordly brow be- 
neath the shadow of the Capitol, Clay followed 
him. And now at last the noblest Roman of them 
all has closed up this mournful procession, casting 
back a shadow which darkens the whole firmament. 
Hmnan greatness, as an abstract conception, is 
not easily defined. But truly great men, when 
they do actually appear, make their own way into 
historv, and cannot fiiil to be recognized. Even be- 
fore he died, Daniel Webster had taken his place in 



8 

the Ages, and, by the clear sufirage of his contem- 
poraries, had been crowned as the ablest man this 
Continent has ever reared ; while his own country- 
men thought it no rashness to pronounce him the 
foremost man of all the world. 

The impression has gone abroad, that he died 
partly of a broken heart. But could the wail of 
grief, which rolled on over this whole continent, 
and over the sea, in company with the tidmgs of 
his death, break tlu-ough the iron fastenings of his 
tomb, and reanimate that prostrate form, well 
might he accept such bitterness of universal sor- 
row as a sufficient atonement for the past. Only 
twice before, in our entire history as a people, has 
there been such a demonstration of deep national 
emotion as now. Once, over the bier of Washmg- 
ton. And again, when Adams and Jefferson jomed 
hands in their exit out of life, as, half a century 
before, they had joined hands over the cradle of 
American Independence. In some features of it, 
the scene just enacted among us is altogether with- 
out a parallel. Recent triumphs of science, spread- 
ing railways and telegraphs from one extremity of 
the country to another, North and South, East 
and West, had strmig the whole Union, as it were, 
with living nerves. Intelligence could fly like 



9 

thought over ahnost every latitude, and nearly 
every longitude of our vast domain. It was 
known, therefore, from Eastport to New Orleans, 
from Boston to St. Louis, when Webster, on his bed 
at Marshfield, lay awaiting hourly and momently 
the dread summons to go. And there crept a sol- 
emn hush over the Continent as the greatest man 
upon it was felt to be closing his eyes on it for- 
ever. Not alone that honored circle of relatives 
and friends gathered in his mansion, but the as- 
sembled nation stood holding their breath m 
speechless suspense at his chamber door. When, in 
the early gray of that Sabbath morning, the last 
sigh fluttered up from those dying lips, it was audi- 
ble over all the land. In thousands of Christian 
Congregations, men and women that day mingled 
their prayers with weeping. And when, on Friday 
the 29tli of October, that long procession moved 
forth to the burial, headed by those ancient men 
bearing the sombre pall, their slow tread thrilled 
the Continent. No such day ever before rose and 
set upon our people. No such pageant ever before 
shadowed our annals. For the present generation 
at least, it was a scene which only our Mother 
Country can rival, when, within these next few 
days, those three bereaved Kingdoms take up their 



10 

Hero of a hundred battles, and bear bim down the 
Strand to the place appomted him by the side of 
Nelson. 

The death of such a man as Daniel Webster^, 
taken away forever from the councils of the nation^ 
taken away forever from the mind and heart and 
genius of the world, is indeed an epoch in our 
history. It comes like some rare convulsion in 
nature, shaking the very ground we stand upon. 
We are summoned by it to a solemn pause in our 
prosperous and proud career. We are challenged 
to consider, that the pillars of society have lost 
their strongest supporting hand. It is well, there- 
fore, Young Gentlemen, that to-day the routine of 
our ordinary life is broken, that we have entered 
the House of God, and do now submit our hearts 
to this impressive lesson of His Providence. 

And yet a sore national bereavement like this 
carries its own lofty and sacred alleviations. It 
was an ancient saying, that the day of one's death 
is the birth-day of Eternity. It ushers all virtuous 
and noble souls into more resplendent scenes, and 
a more saiblune activity. So that anthems are 
fitter for it by far than dirges. For a great man 
like him whom Ave have just followed to his bu- 
rial, there are two Eternities prepared: the Eter- 



11 

nity of his own personal existence beyond the 
grave, and, in a qualified sense, the Eternity of his 
mfluence left behind him upon earth. And now 
for our Hero these Eternities have both beo;un. 
Before him and behind him stretches a broad path 
of Hght; and no cloud henceforward shall ever 
darken either the one or the other. Onward and 
upward into that profounder knowledge of God, 
for which, in his happier moments, he always 
panted, is he makmg now swift progress. While 
the path, so often stormy, along which he trod 
among us with his reserved and lion heart, has 
gathered, as in a moment, a double grandeur. His 
character, so long and so bitterly traduced, is al- 
ready vindicated. The deeds he w^rought, lifted 
from the dust of the arena, have passed up into 
history. His words, so fitly treasured in ample 
volumes, soon to be followed by other products of 
his prolific and princely mind, are bonds to fate 
itself, that his memory and his influence shall 
never die. Lideed, he has now but just entered, 
even here in this world, upon his own proper ca- 
reer of fame and power. His rightful empire has 
but just begun. The sceptre given him could be 
grasped only by a dying hand. A longer life on 
earth, even though it had been gladdened nnd 



12 

adorned by the highest honors of office which the 
nation could bestow, w^ould have been a paltry sat- 
isfaction compared with what he has now ob- 
tained. As in the old Roman legend, Romulus by 
apotheosis became Quirinus, dying as a King, that 
he midit come back to the faith of his embar- 
rassed and struggling people as a Divinity, so now 
with us. We have lost a Statesman ; but we have 
gained a Sage. And for generations to come, nei- 
ther President, nor Senate, nor Judicial Bench, 
shall wield half the power of this giant Shade. 
Death has crowned him more than Emperor. 
He sits now on Olympian Heights. His Opinions 
have swelled into Oracles. His words, which be- 
fore were battles, shall henceforth be victories. 
Not but that our fondness for him would long 
have stayed the stroke, by wdiich he was swept 
away. But since he had filled up so roundly 
the appointed measure of human life, and had 
immensely more than filled all ordinary measures 
of human greatness and glory, and the hour had 
struck for him to go, it is with loftiest salutations, 
and a solemn joy, that we dismiss him to his large 
inheritance of power on earth and blessedness in 
Heaven. 

You will not expect me, on the present occa- 



13 

sion, to rehearse minutely the story of his life. 
The history of this one man involves, for thirty 
years at least, the history of the country. You 
know it all by heart. The leading dates of it, and 
all its grand salient events and epochs, are em- 
blazoned in your grateful memories. The public 
journals, ever since he breathed his last, have been 
freighted with the theme. Indeed, they have 
brought us but little else. This one name has 
filled them from day to day, from week to week. 
The shadow of it has lam heavily upon the land. 
A national election, resulting in the unexampled 
defeat of one great party, and triumph of another, 
has come and gone, exciting comparatively little 
interest. The American people, of all parties, 
have seemed resolved, to hear, to speak, to think 
of nothing but their recent overwhelming loss. 
Our Achilles slain, we have hardly inquired for 
the fate of Troy. 

It is frequently remarked of eminent men, in 
the freshness of the public grief for them, that the 
time to write their memoirs, and settle the just 
boundaries of their fame, will be slow to come. 
But the name of Daniel Webster solicits no such 
long delay. His true historical position, by a 
special fehcity of fortune, was determined by him- 



14 

self. He anticipated, as it were, his own posthu- 
mous renown. With his own hand, he built his 
own monument, and carved his own epitaph. 
History, eager to recount his achievements, could 
not wait for hun to die. At any time, these ten 
years back, he might have said of himself, as he 
once said of Massachusetts, " The past at least is 
secure." And now that his hfe is ended, and his 
errand done, it is all secure. Already do we know 
enough to ensure for him the j^lace he cov.eted by 
the side of Washington. And we await what 
farther revelations are yet to come, only that we 
may take him still more closely to our hearts, and 
breathe on his memory a still hvelier benediction 
as we pass it down on its way to future genera- 
tions. 

The grand charm of Webster's biography con- 
•sists in this, that he was so entirely, and so in- 
tensely, American. We can hold him up to the 
nations as a specimen of what may be produced 
on this new soil. The Old World had as little as 
possible to do in making him. His ancestors, of 
Scottish blood, came over here among the ear- 
liest immigrations. They were found in Hamp- 
ton, on the seaboard in New Hampshire, within 
sixteen years after the settlement of Plymouth. 



15 

His grandmother, from whom on his father's side, 
he inherited his swarthy complexion, was the 
daughter of a New England clergyman. His 
father was a soldier in the Old French War; and 
served also ui the armies of the Eevolution. He 
was a pioneer of new settlements in the wilder- 
ness, going first from Hampton to what is now 
East Kingston, and from East Kingston to Sahs- 
bury. A tall, dignified and handsome man; "The 
handsomest man I ever saw," said Daniel, " except 
my brother Ezekiel"; endowed with native talent 
enough for wider spheres than he ever filled, but 
well content to be a plain New Hampshire farmer; 
liis hands hardened by daily toil for his daily 
bread, while he kept his heart reverent towards 
God, and gentle to his wife and children. By a 
second marriage he had two sons: Ezekiel and 
Daniel. Ezekiel, the elder by birth, though second 
in the order of his public education, if not quite 
equal to his more famous brother, was yet well 
worthy of the relationsliip existing between them. 
The afiection, which united them, was uncommonly 
fervid and tender; each craving the applause of 
the other as the keenest possible stimulant to his 
genius. At Concord, in 1829, in the midst of a 
])rilliant address to the jury, Ezekiel fell dead in 



16 

the Court Room. "The very finest human form," 
wrote the surviving brother, seventeen years later, 
"that ever I laid eyes on, I saw him in his coffin 
— a white forehead, a tinged cheek, and a com- 
plexion as clear as heavenly light." Daniel in- 
herited the Batchelder complexion, and was as 
dark almost as an Indian. He was born just as 
the Revolutionary War was closing in 1782. He 
came mto the world, therefore, under the Stripes 
and the Stars. No British authority was ever over 
him. He was cradled m a cottage farm-house of 
the plainest New England pattern. He went to 
the district school when there was one, none too 
good at the best; and spent his Summers in work- 
ing upon the farm. TiU he was fourteen years of 
age, he had hardly stirred away from the homely 
fire-side. In 1796, he rode down on horseback, 
forty or fifty miles, to Exeter, and entered the 
Phillips Academy there, then under the manage- 
ment of Dr. Benjamin Abbot — that famous teacher 
of so many famous men. The year following, he 
entered Dartmouth College, and took high rank 
there as a scholar; excelling especially in Mathe- 
matics, in Latin and in Logic. At nineteen years 
of age, he was graduated. Shortly after, he had 
charge of the Academy at Fryeburg in our own 



17 

State; earning about a dollar a day, all of which 
he saved, partly for himself, that he might com- 
plete his professional studies, and partly for his 
brother Ezekiel, then in College at Hanover; pay- 
ing his own expenses meanwliile by copying deeds 
in the Recorder's office. In 1805 he was admitted 
to the Bar in Boston, introduced by the Hon. 
Christopher Gore, who predicted a brilliant career 
for him. The next year, having refused the Clerk- 
ship of the Courts in his native County, with the 
offer of a tempting salary, which he needed sorely 
enough, intimating, as a reason for it, his purpose 
to be "an actor rather than a register of oth- 
er men's actions," he nailed up his sign, and es- 
tablished hunself in practice, close by his father, 
that he might be a help and a comfort to him in 
his infirm old age. In the course of a few months, 
his father having died, he moved down to Ports- 
mouth, where, for nine years, he measured his 
strength with some of the first lawyers of the 
day, during this time going twice to Congress ; 
till, in 1816, he removed to Boston, and Massa- 
chusetts thenceforward claimed him as her own. 
The rest you all know — how he mounted from the 
House to the Senate ; from the Senate to the Cab- 
inet ; and ought, in liistoric justice, and for the 



18 

credit of our institutions, to have mounted higher 
still ; and how, all along this brilliant and climbing 
path, he shed down a glory, such as no American 
has rivalled, on his Country and his Age. 

A life more purely American was never lived 
here upon our Continent. Not till he was sixty 
years of age, did he ever set foot upon another 
soil. Cradled among our mountains on acres just 
rescued from the forest, he gave his days on earth 
to the Republic, and chose his grave by the seaside, 
amid the graves of the Pilgrim Fathers of New 
England. From first to last, in blood, in birth, in 
his traditions, in his cherished habits, in the very 
structure of liis mind, in every tiling, American. 
And nobly has he been rewarded for it. His name 
is now blended indissolubly with the proudest ob- 
jects of liis patriotic idolatry. The Rock at Ply- 
mouth ; the Shaft on Bunker Hill ; the Capitol at 
Washington ; the iron pillars of our Boundary 
upon the North ; our Flag on the High Seas un- 
challenged in its march, are all but so many me- 
mentoes of his masterly career. 

Hence to you. Young Gentlemen, and to all of 
us, the pecuhar magic of his name. Pericles was 
an Athenian ; and, through the mists of two thou- 
sand years, another language, and the atmosphere 



19 

of other institutions, it is not so easy to measure 
him. Burke was a Briton of a hundred years 
affo, drawino; breath amid Cathedrals, and the 
pomps of Royalty, and the slowly decaying abuses 
of Feudahvsm; and must seem, therefore, a little 
ahen to us. But Webster is of our own kith and 
kin. He has climbed our granite hills ; he has trac- 
ed our mountain brooks ; he has talked with us in 
our streets ; he has argued in our Court Rooms ; 
he has harangued our crowds ; awed our Senates ; 
and inflamed us with enthusiasm for our Flag, 
wherever floating, on the land or on the sea. He 
is one of us. We understand him, root and branch. 
And if Miltiades at Marathon stirred up Themis 
tocles to win for Greece another crown of glory 
at Salamis, it were strange indeed if the fame of 
this farmer's son of SaHsbury kindled none of his 
young countrymen to emulate his greatness. 

One of his intimate friends has said, it has 
often occurred to him, that if other men could 
only tlimk as long, as closely and as patiently as 
Webster, their pubhc efforts might equal his. This 
sounds too much like praising his wonderful dili- 
gence, at the expense of his still more wonderful 
genius. It cannot be so. There is, doubtless, a 
native and radical difference in the intellectual 



20 

endowments of men. Great original power is 
grounded in the very constitution ; is wrought 
into the brain and nerves and muscular fibres of 
the body. And if ever there was a man who 
carried empire in his step, on his forehead, and in 
his eye, it was Daniel Webster. Though lean and 
apparently of a delicate habit m his earher life, 
he inherited at bottom a peculiar vitahty and 
toughness of constitution. He came of a race of 
sturdy farmers. The toils and hardsliips of five 
generations, on rough lands, mider a bracing cli- 
mate, had packed his system with hidden strength. 
So that when, m the progress of years, his form 
came to be rounded out to its full proportions, no 
such man trod the Continent. It was the testi- 
mony of all who met him, whether in America or 
in England, that they had never looked upon his 
equal, or his like. He seemed to belong to 
another race and order of bemgs. He had the 
port of some superior inteUigence, sent down here 
to win an easy supremacy. His brain exceeded 
in size the common average by at least one third. 
Only two such heads had ever been noticed in the 
world before. The glance of his eye was marvel- 
lous, searching as hght itself ; and when strong 
feehng roused him, it was terrible. Those who 



21 

came the closest to liim, were the most delighted 
and amazed. The impression always made, was 
that of vast powers never yet called out. For 
one, I may be permitted to say, that I could im- 
agine only one emergency at all equal to his 
genius. Seemingly nothing short of an actual 
invasion of our soil by foreign armies, sent here 
to overturn the institutions and crush the spirit 
of Kepublican Liberty, and, in their march, tramp- 
ling on the graves of his Idndred, could have 
roused that Titanic nature to the full smng of its 
tremendous but slumbering energies. 

And yet it was his own opinion, that he owed 
his success in life to his diligence. The only 
genius, which he acknowledged to himself, was a 
genius for hard work. A more industrious and 
untiring student never fastened himself down to 
his books. A more careful, severe and unflinching 
thinker never put his faculties to the stretch. How 
far back m his life it first occurred to him, that he 
was possibly superior to other men, we have not 
yet been told. But we know very well, that he 
set out in his career with a rare determination to 
make the most of himself and his opportunities, 
and leave his mark upon the world. There was 
certamly no very extraordinary stunulus in his 



22 

circumstances. He inhaled the same air, ate the 
same food, studied the same books as other men. 
But he had a towering ambition, and an iron will, 
with an iron diligence in working it. And here, 
in the very heart of our common New England 
Society, our prosaic and homely life, he carried 
himself up to this majestic height. A genuine 
product was he of our own soil, and our own insti- 
tutions. The whole make and the whole genius 
of him was American. The national hfe culmi- 
nated in him. What Philip was to Macedon, 
Caesar to Rome, and Hannibal to Carthage, such 
is Webster to us — our Eepresentative and Fore- 
most man. 

To look now a little more closely at him, we 
may take notice of him, first, as a Lawyer. 

The hiunble country office, where he entered 
upon his legal discijDlme with Coke upon Littleton, 
is still standing. Lord Eldon's rule for distinction 
— ^'Ho hve hke a hermit, and work like a horse", 
was exemplified in his case from the begmning. 
His practice was, to read law closely for six or 
■eight hours in the morning, and then in the after- 
noon to recreate and enrich his mind over such 
sterhng authors as Bacon, Shakspeare and Milton. 
Boswell's Johnson, I have been told, was always a 
favorite book with him. 



23 

When he came into practice in his native State, 
the Bar of New Hampshire, especially that of 
Rockingham County, was second, perhaps, to none 
in the Union. Jeremiah Smith was upon the 
Bench ; and Jeremiah Mason and George SuUivan 
in the full renown and full vigor of their pro- 
fessional career. They were mature, acute, learned 
and powerful lawyers. And the young man had 
to close in with them as an equal. His first ap- 
pearance was in Hillsborough County in 1806. 
He had been admitted to practice as an Attorney 
only ; not yet as a Counsellor. He was not en- 
titled, therefore, to address the jury, but merely 
prepared the brief, examined the witnesses, and 
then turned the case over to the Senior Counsel 
to be argued. But the Senior Counsel had next 
to nothing left for him to do. Webster had 
swept the ground before him. His luminous 
statement of the points at issue and his masterly 
examination of the witnesses, had virtually settled 
the whole question, and borne off the verdict in 
advance. Judge Smith, then Chief Justice of 
New Hampshire, was charmed by this display of 
address and power, and on coming out of the 
Court Room remarked to Gen. Miller, who tells 
the story, that " he had never before met such a 
young man as that." 



24 

The nine or ten years that followed, finished 
the making of him as a lawyer. He had his office 
in Portsmonth, close by Mason, travelled with 
him into most of the Comities in the State, and 
was engaged, oftener against him than with him, in 
a great portion of all the more important trials of 
the day. And Mason himself was frank enough 
to admit that the young man was a match for him 
at any time. While Webster, on his part, con- 
fessed that he had to study for it. It was then 
he formed that habit of early rising, which, in later 
life, he reckoned so essential to him as a scholar. 
Nothing short of all the law which bore upon the 
case in hand, and a perfect mastery of all the points 
to be made, could serve his purpose, and prepare 
him to stand the tug with his athletic adversary. 
He used, therefore, to rise at the break of day, 
that he might marshal his authorities, settle his 
principles, mark out his line of argument, and go 
armed at every point for the encounter. By such 
a regimen, he put himself very shortly into the 
front rank of lawyers and advocates. So that 
when he appeared before the Supreme Court in 
Washington, to argue the Dartmouth College Case, 
Judge Marshall pronounced him one of the very 
first lawyers in the Union. And so he stood from 



25 

that day till he died. One after another, the 
great lawyers passed away : Pinkney, Parsons, 
Wirt, Story and Mason. But Webster still stood 
towering in the Forum. The generation which 
sprang up around him, brought no rival to his side. 
He stood alone. For many years his supremacy 
was not contested. And when he died, the Pro- 
fession with one voice declared him its proudest 
ornament. 

The reputation of an eminent lawyer, beyond 
that of most other distinguished men, is apt to 
rest very much upon mere tradition. So large a 
part of what has to be done in order to the suc- 
cess of an important cause, is either out of sight, 
or is not to be reported. Wellmgton has said that 
it requires more generalship to feed armies and get 
them well into a battle, than to get them through 
it. So of lawyers. Their real strength is laid 
out most effectively in the preparation of their 
cases. While much of what is done in the Court 
Room, either from the very nature of the work, 
or for want of skilful reporters, perishes with the 
occasion. Webster, in this regard, has fared better 
than the majority. Some ten or twelve of his 
legal arguments and speeches have been preserved 
in the recent edition of his works. In criminal 



26 

practice, his successful defence of the Kennistons 
against what seemed an inevitable though unjust 
conviction on a charge of highway robbery ; and 
his argument in the Salem murder case, are models 
in their kind. Commercial law he mastered early 
in life, and with a large practice m this direction 
got large revenues. Constitutional law, however, 
was his favorite department ; and the perfect ease 
with which he handled all such questions may 
help us, perhaps, to our truest appreciation of 
his proper mtellectual rank. His first great effort, 
if not his finest, in this kind, was in defence of 
his Alma Mater, when her chartered rights were 
struck at through legislative enactments. A cri- 
sis had come, not in the history of that one Col- 
lege alone, but of all the Colleges alike. The 
point to be established, was the mviolability of 
charters. That point is now settled beyond the 
ordinary chances of annulment; and the credit 
of it for all time to come will belong to Webster. 
But his whole career as a Lawyer was m every 
respect remarkable. Men were never tired of 
admiring the amplitude of his legal attainments ; 
his complete digestion of all the facts in a case ; 
the denseness of his logic; the rich variety of his 
resources ; and, most of all, that native magna- 



27 

nimlty of tone, and judicial breadth and fairness 
of statement, which gained the confidence of 
juries, and lifted the Bar, for the time being, to a 
level with the Bench. In fine, had he been, like 
Parsons, or Mason, nothing but a lawyer, his repu- 
tation would have been sufficient for any man. 
But when we consider that this was only a fraction 
of what he was, and what he accomplished, our 
wonder at him is hardly to be expressed. 

This brings us to take notice of him as a 
Statesman. 

Carlyle is reported to have said, that Webster 
was the only man he ever met with who realized 
to him his idea of a Statesman. There was such 
a vast breadth to him ; such comprehensiveness ; 
such solidity; and withal such a serene and easy 
movement of his strength. 

If his Statesmanship lacked any thing to make 
it perfect, and of the highest kind, it was the 
originating and creative element. This defect 
was foreshadowed ua his earliest literary tastes. 
Of the two great languages of antiquity studied 
in our Colleges, he strongly preferred the Latin 
to the Greek. The native subtlety and fine ideal 
temper of the Greek mind, were not germane and 
genial to him. Plato he seems not to have 



28 

relished, or noticed mucli. Had he crossed the 
Adriatic for mstruction, Aristotle would have been 
his master rather. This betrays the native bent 
of his mind, and fm^nishes a clue to his Statesman- 
ship. He was not speculative, but practical. He 
could expound better than he could originate. 
He could uphold better than he could build. He 
could carry on a government better than he could 
make one. His genius was distinctively more 
conservative than constructive. In a word, he 
was first of all and preeminently a Lawyer. Cal- 
houn in this respect had the advantage of him. 
Perhaps also Clay. The kind of mind that was 
in him is sometimes attempted to be set forth by 
parallels. Several names out of English History 
have been cited. But most frequently the name 
of Burke. And the resemblance is certainly 
worth noticing. With diffidence I venture to 
suggest a still stateher name for comparison. I 
refer to Bacon, the great originator of the modern 
inductive movement in philosophy ; at once Phi- 
losopher, Lawyer, Statesman and most accomplished 
Master of Sentences. With many diversities, no 
doubt, both of mind and temper, both of judgment 
and of culture, there are yet some points of strong 
resemblance between the two ; regarding Bacon, 



^ 

^ 



29 

of course, not as we are told he might have beeiij 
a keenly speculative thinker, but as we see he 
was, a man of the world and an Englishman. We 
flind in both of them the same disinclination to 
xined and curious subtleties of thought ; the 
same straight honest outlook upon things as they 
actually are ; the same downright common sense ; 
the same ease of discursive sweep ; the same 
solidity of mental fibre, griping a subject as in 
the jaws of an iron vice ; and, brightening all, a 
beauty as of the morning sky. 

So much for the mental structure of the great 
%^ American. As for his training, he took his way 
to the Senate and the Cabinet through the Fo- 
rum. He was first a Lawyer ; and then a States- 
man. But a Lawyer of the largest mould. We 
may add, too, without fear of havuig the climax 
questioned, an American Lawyer. Mr. Justice 
Coleridge, now one of the brightest ornaments of 
the English Bench, has remarked that the position 
of an American Lawyer is peculiarly favorable to 
an extended and scientific knowledge of Law. The 
Enghsh practice, he says, is more technical. The 
Enghsh Books are too often wanting in the state- 
ment of philosophical and scientific principles ; 
they deal more with cases. The American Con- 



30 

stitution and Policy of government force upon the 
Bar in our country, as he thinks, a better knowl- 
edge of International and Roman Law. 

What is thus true of all our Lawyers in a 
measure, was preemmently true of Webster. He 
was not a Lawyer merely, but a Constitutional 
Lawyer. His instinct was to search for the broad- 
est principles, and set every case on its true basis 
of propriety and right, while, at the same time, 
he held fast by the letter of the Constitution and 
the Laws. And so he passed by an easy stride 
from the Court Room to the Capitol. He found 
enthroned there as Supreme Regent in all na- 
tional affairs, domestic and foreign, the Constitu- 
tion handed down to us from our Fathers. It 
was familiar to him. Tradition says that he first 
read it, when a boy in Sahsbury, printed on a 
cheap cotton handkerchief It had been his study 
from the beginning of his legal course. He had 
pondered every chapter and every section of it. 
He knew it almost by heart. He admired it as 
a masterpiece of political sagacity. In his own 
solemn style of speech, he revered it as " A Divine 
interposition in our behalf" And he loved it, too, 
with a profoimd and glowing j)assion, as the legacy 
of heroic sires. It was on this Document that he 



31 

planted his firm and vigorous feet. He knew its 
history, as he knew the history of his own father's 
family. He knew just what it had cost. In 
imagination he had traversed again and again 
aU that perilous wilderness of the Confederacy ; 
had repeated all those doubtful struggles of preju- 
dice and selfish passion; and now that he had 
crossed the Jordan, and was standing on the Soil 
of Promise, he had no thought of being driven 
back again mto Egypt. The madness of breaking 
up the existing order of things, and taking the 
risk of a new construction of the States, seemed 
stupendous to him. His conviction was that if 
the present Union were once dissolved, we shoidd 
never get another ; but that anarchy and ruin 
would slide down upon us lil^e an avalanche. This 
was his creed. The Union, as now established, 
was sacred to him. The Constitution was the rock 
of his hope, against which he hurled his adversaries 
with a concussion which shook the Senate Cham- 
ber. Whoever lifted his hand against it, perished 
at its base. In no one of our Statesmen, has 
there been so strong a sense of History ; always, 
from the beginning of his public life, did he set 
himself in the light of it, and invoke its scrutiny. 
The presence of the departed Patriots and Fathers 



32 

of the Country seemed as real to him as the pres- 
ence of his contemporaries. He saw their " ven- 
erable forms bending down to behold him from 
the abodes above." He gazed, too, on the long 
line of coming generations, and coveted their just 
applause. 

The great problem and the great embarrass- 
ment of his career as a Statesman, was the per- 
plexing question of Slavery. As a moral question, 
he could dispose of it at once. From Pljmaouth 
Kock he proclaimed to the world his abhorrence of 
it as a wrong. Repeatedly did he bear witness 
against it as a burden and a blight. Up to 1850 
he stood against it, on all proper occasions, with 
the calm but determined front of a New England 
man. On the 7th of March of that year he 
changed, I will not say his ground, but certainly 
he changed his aspect and his voice. Thousands 
charged him with ambition, and treachery to the 
North. He was accused of bidding for the Presi- 
dency. True or false, it was the tragedy of his 
life. Prodigious labors, indeed, ensued. Never 
before was his great strength so manifest, as during 
the months wliich immediately followed that effort 
in the Senate. But multitudes, once his wor- 
shippers, were grieved ; and their hearts cooled 



33 

towards him. The iron now entered his soul. 
And though he drew his mantle over the wound, 
and still kept on his way, it seemed as though 
his brow was gathering sadness, and the great 
foimtains of power within him were breaking 
up. I would raise here no question on which we 
are likely, any of us, to differ. I will only say, 
that for myself I prefer the side of charity, and a 
generous construction of his course. That he 
hated Slavery, he had declared again and again in 
words as sure of immortality as any words ever 
committed to the keepmg of our mother tongue. 
And gladly, at any cost of national treasure, would 
he have seen his country cleared of this grievous 
burden. But he had- always maintained that the 
question belonged exclusively to the States in 
which the evil exists, and not at all to the Federal 
Government. The Constitution, at all events, he 
loved as a man loves his own mother, or his own 
child. And m his honest judgment, as he declared, 
he looked upon the Constitution and the Union 
as just ready to be crushed. He leaped down, 
therefore, into the breach, and, with a brow now 
bared of its raven locks, but an arm not in the 
least wasted of its strength, he breasted what 
seemed to him the impending rum, and rolled it 

5 



34 

back. The question of Slavery he was willing to 
adjourn to more propitious and temperate days 
for a settlement. Then and there the Union of 
the States was menaced, and must first of all be 
saved and strengthened. This done, we remain a 
vigorous nation, and may hope, by the blessing of 
Heaven, to outgrow our maladies. But with the 
Union shattered, black and white, bond and free 
must all wallow in misery together. Such was 
his belief And he stood by it like a martyr. If 
mistaken in regard to this matter, he was not 
alone. If disingenuous and selfish, the retribution 
has been severe. If wholly right, conscientious 
and patriotic, it was the most gallant chapter in 
his life. The question is one on which public 
opinion has been much divided among us. We 
leave it aU to the judgment of History. To this 
Tribunal he himself appealed. And the appeal 
must stand. 

The greater part of his labor as a Statesman 
was laid out upon questions of finance and com- 
merce. Commercial Law had engaged a good 
deal of his time and study while in practice at 
the Bar. And the commercial ideas of society 
and government had always great weight with 
him. " Government," he was fond of saying, "is 



35 

established for the protection of property." This 
tangible, material end and advantage of it always 
impressed him forcibly. As a matter of flict, the 
fortunes of a State do hinge, as he saw very 
clearly, on these material interests. And his aim 
was, to lift the whole subject up to the dignity of 
a science. He wished to rest the legislation of 
the country on its just and proper basis. He had 
consequently much to say of Banks and Tariffs. 
And if he changed sides on any questions, they 
were questions merely of industrial and com- 
mercial expediency, on which other leading States- 
men changed their position as well as he. For 
years it was a favorite outcry against him, that 
he was sectional and narrow. But without erood 
reason. For while he gave his first thoughts, as 
in duty bound, to that part of the country from 
which he came, he embraced every part of the 
country in his large regard, and aimed at nothing 
less than the solid prosperity and enduring glory 
of the whole. 

Of his foreign policy we have now no time to 
speak. Greece, Hungary and the South American 
Kepublics were all cheered by his trumpet voice. 
Towards England and the other leading Powers 
of Europe, he maintained at all times the lofty 



36 

bearing of an equal. Injustice he would neither 
do nor brook. Peace was his avowed and honest 
preference. But in a just quarrel, he would have 
challenged the strongest of them to the shock of 
arms. It was the pride of his patriotic heart to 
behold our Flag, with fearless cannon under it, 
riding the High Seas in the pomp of conscious 
power. He settled boundaries for us ; and laid 
down important principles of Maritime Law. He 
opened China to our trade. He set on foot the 
expedition to Japan. Towards Austria and Rus- 
sia, in their tramphng down of European Freedom 
on the plains of Hungary, he employed a tone of 
majestic rebuke which electrified the nations. 

It was in these outward relations that he 
appeared to the best advantage. He seemed to 
grasp in its completeness the great problem now 
working out upon this Continent; he felt the 
responsibility imposed upon us as a nation among 
the nations ; and, profoundly grateful to God for 
what had already been accomplished in the name 
of Republican Freedom, he was determined, to 
the full extent of the power conferred upon him, 
to hold his country to the path of duty and to her 
place in history. 

My design was, in the next place, to speak of 



37 

Webster as an Orator. But the time proper to 
be taken on the present occasion is fast wearing 
away, and we can touch the topic but lightly. 

There is nothing more intensely coveted among 
us than the power of cogent and persuasive dis- 
course. The demand for it seems not to have 
been diminished materially by the multiplication 
of books and journals. The voice of the Hving 
speaker is a necessity of Republics since the in- 
vention of printing, almost as much as before. In 
our own country, at all events, a very high esti- 
mate is put upon eloquence. On our young men 
especially the ambition of it strikes powerfully. 
And if it be genuine eloquence that is sought for, 
the ambition is commendable. True eloquence, 
in its highest kind, may be regarded as the last 
and finest product of our rational faculties. For 
the substance of it, there must be precious and 
weighty thought. For the form of it, a perfection 
like that of sculptured marble. For the inspiration 
of it, a soul of fire. And he who attains to this 
rare and wonderful result, or in any good degree 
approaches it, will surely momit to power in So- 
ciety and in the State. The fascination of such 
gifts is irresistible. Manldnd almost worship their 
orators. The fame of Demosthenes is as highly 



38 

enviable as that of any mortal in all the tide of 
time. 

That Webster was truly a great Orator, cannot 
now need to be proved. It is universally con- 
ceded. Not that he possessed all those externals 
of oratory, which an ideal completeness might re- 
quire. For, to name no other limitation, the iner- 
tia of his constitution was great, and he warmed 
but slowly to his themes. And yet there was that 
in his eye, his voice, his bearing, which made him 
sometimes, even in his elocution, a matchless 
speaker. But the mind and the soul of eloquence 
were in him to a marvel. His nature demanded 
grave occasions. In mere holiday oratory he 
seldom mdulged. It was indispensable to him, 
that there should be somethmg for him to accom- 
plish ; and then he had somethmg to say. First 
of all, his rule was, to master his subject ; to lay 
it open to the bottom ; to exhaust the learnmg 
pertaining to it, so far as seemed desirable ; and 
then to set himself to the task of building up his 
materials, begrudging neither time nor toil, till the 
whole oration rose before him as a living thing. 
One rule which he worked by, he has himself made 
known to us. Prof Woodward of Dartmouth, he 
once remarked, " taught him how much he could 



39 

strike out of whatever he wrote or spoke, and 
still have enough to communicate all he desired 
to say." Hence that well nigh inimitable style ; 
remarkable at once for its beautiful simpHcity, its 
extreme condensation, and its sinewy vio-or. 

As an Orator, his best work was done between 
the ages of 38 and 48. His masterpieces were 
the Address at Pljnuouth in 1820 ; the Oration at 
Bunlier Hill in 1825; the Eulogy on Adams and 
Jefferson in 1826 ; and his Reply to Hayne in 
1830. 

And yet there is eloquence of the purest quality 
scattered throughout all his writings. Indeed, his 
common talk was eloquent ; so clear, so forcible, 
so felicitous in phrase. He was quite as good a 
talker, it is thought, as Dr. Johnson himself Much 
is yet to come to us from his busy pen ; treatises, 
it may be hoped, on government, on morals, on 
religion ; at any rate, a large store of letters to 
private friends and to public men ; which, with 
the six noble volumes already pubhshed, will fur- 
nish our students with a model of severe and 
masterly, yet highly finished eloquence, such as 
may well excuse them from looking too humbly 
either towards England or towards Greece. Young 



40 

Gentlemen^ I commend you to the close and dili- 
gent study of this American Demosthenes. 

Finally, it is incumbent on us to take some 
notice of Webster as a Man. 

To have been a great Lawyer, a great States- 
man, or a great Orator, is not enough ; even 
though it were possible to be all these, without 
being also something more and something better 
than these. But the truth is, that power of the 
highest kind in any direction must have character 
to underHe it. There must be private worth and 
manliness, social integrity, and the fear of God. 
In Webster's own language, " there can be no true 
greatness without reUgion." 

It is not to be disguised to-day, that the private 
character of Daniel Webster has been much ques- 
tioned for many years. It has been the fashion of 
the public press, and of society in its careless and 
random talk, to speak lightly of him in this 
regard. But now at last it is beginning to be dis- 
covered, that society and the public press have 
been doing him a grievous wrong. Not that he 
was without his frailties and his faults. He never 
tried to cloak them. He was no hypocrite. But 
every step was followed, every motion watched, 
and every word repeated. And who among us, I 



41 

beg to know, coiild pass undamaged throiigli such 
an ordeal? 

Only once or twice during liis whole life did 
he take the trouble to vindicate his good name. He 
permitted libels to circulate unrebuked ; remarking 
once in homely phrase, as a reason for it, that 
" he did not think it well to shovel out his paths 
till it had done snowing." One story, particularly 
scandalous, startmg on plausible authority, appar 
rently well vouched for, and fillmg the country 
with its echoes, he rose against in his indignation, 
and nailed it to the wall. Scores of stories, I have 
no doubt, might have been served in the same 
way. And yet it must probably be allowed, that 
there was at times an inexcusable variance between 
his conduct and his convictions. And could he 
now speak back to us from be^^ond the vail, he 
would charge us on no accomit to deny or extenu- 
ate the fault. But what means all this clamor 
now ringing against his infractions of the moral 
law ? Wlio are they that take it upon themselves 
to cast these stones ? Who is perfect ? On what 
footing are mortals saved ? In the Book of God 
I find it written, that we are saved by grace ; and 
that none shall ever walk in white uj^on the 
Heavenly Plains, but such as have washed their 

6 



42 

garments in the blood of Christ. Human guilti- 
ness, moreover, is not to be measured mercilessly, 
without regard to the temptations which assailed 
the sinning soul. Great men must needs have 
great susceptibility to evil. The fire within burns 
through. 

Over against these frailties we have to set an 
unwonted nobleness of nature ; family affections 
of the greatest depth and tenderness ; a patriotism 
as unmixed with littleness as ever filled a human 
bosom ; a dignity in public life, which never 
dragged its mantle in the dust ; a tone of serious- 
ness pervading all his thoughts ; and a singular 
immaculateness of social and public speech, giving 
forth to the world no sentence, wliich dying he 
could have wished to blot. Nay, more. Webster, 
we have every reason to believe, was a christian 
man. He had by nature a strong sense of religious 
things. He was built on that grand scale of being, 
which makes religious faith a necessity. He could 
no more do without it than Bacon or Kej)ler. 
In the kind of doctrine wliich his nature craved, 
Jonathan Edwards was not more a Puritan than 
he. And then he underwent the experience which 
consists of repentance and faith in the Redeemer. 
Just after commencing practice in Salisbury, he 



43 

joined himself to the Church there. The clear 
and highly satisfactory account which he then 
gave of the work of grace in his soul is remem- 
bered to this day. That early covenant he never 
disowned. The strong currents of life swept him 
hither and thither ; but he never lost sight of the 
pole-star. And for several years past it has been 
plain to those who knew him best, that his course 
was lying straighter and straighter towards Heaven. 
His exit out of hfe was eminently worthy of 
him, both as a christian and a man. He set his 
house in order with calmness, as though he had 
been merely starting on a journey. The business 
of the nation, the affairs of his family, and the 
eternal interests of his own soul, all occupied his 
mind by turns without distraction. No humblest 
duty was too lowly for him ; no highest duty too 
lofty. He prayed audibly for the pardon of his 
sins ; he laid hold upon the hope set before him 
in the Gospel ; he exhorted his relatives and 
friends not to neglect the one thing needful ; and 
then he turned his soul for a strong, steady, solemn 
gaze into the Eternity, which was opening its 
portals to receive him. As life ebbed out, he 
sounded his way along with measured and careful 
step, as though he would know the grand and 



44 

solitary path. That cry of his, in the stillness of 
the night, piercing every chamber of his house — 
« Life ! life ! Death ! death ! How curious it is !" 
betrays the solemn working of his thoughts. Pres- 
ently his breast stops heaving; his foot strikes 
through the vail ; and the mighty man stands face 
to face with the God he feared. Ours, ours only 
is the loss. The gain is his. 



%-ik 




'\ 



A 









• 1\ - ♦ ♦_ 






-I • o > » 






".y 







^. ^ 



-^./ 




V^ •*.'-»- O 






Iv^ 



^v^ 



'Jt^ 



>^ 



^ 












>°<v 



, I ' « 










V'' 



'^■^^V* 






' ^^ 






»• 'it/''J> 







J'"-' .<^ ... ^-^ 












V 



r« 'vs. * 






.«*°* 



« 






1 » 5 



.<J^^ 



>^ 



^ 0-""* ^ J> .*••* ^ 



A.' ^. 



-^^0^ 



.ji 







,^ c^^. 



V 







